beckoning
by songs
Summary: ten moments. this is not love; — armin ო annie.


** title**: beckoning

**pairing**: armin ო annie

**summary**: Annie, Armin, and this is not love. Ten moments.

**notes: **mostly canon compliant. in the same universe as _the crystal queen._

**disclaimer**: own nothing

* * *

**i. **She is a flicker in the moonglow—all pearl-eyes and bone-fists as she shadow-boxes in the empty training-grounds. Armin breathes the night-air deep into his lungs, his own hands uncurled at his sides. His gaze shifts from the sky—_the same stars follow you wherever you go, _his books had always said—down to the star-rouged girl.

He tries to remember her name—Anne? Anna? it's only been two weeks, and the names and faces are blurs, even in his sharp mind—but decides against disturbing her; he is about to press forward and head back to the dorms when he is interrupted by a swift kick to his _neck._

Armin's reflexes are murky and he barely dodges; he does, however manage to catch her wrist when she moves in for another blow, but her form is boneless, and he vaguely registers that she _let _him stop her.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, tone wooden. There's no bite, no anger, none of the emotion that she had pulsed into her movements.

"I… I was out for a walk, then I happened to see you," he says, weakly. He's being honest, really; the summer-nights leave the dorm-rooms airless and muggy. "I… um. You have a really good kick?"

"Hn," she says, easily unwinding her wrist from his grasp, before turning away. Something in her face softens, but not enough; her profile is all angles, peaks of lips and nose and lashes, and in the night, she almost ethereal, like a fallen-goddess, carved from ice. "Thanks."

And then she walks. Away from him—and it is only when she is completely out of his line of sight that he remembers her name:

_Annie Leonhart._

_x_

**ii.** He is sitting with Eren and Mikasa at the breakfast-table when he spots her, mutedly ladling clumps of gruel onto her plate, before heading to an empty table. She walks without a bone out of place, and Armin hears himself speak before he realizes it:

"Annie!" he calls. "Come sit with us!"

Mikasa raises and eyebrow, and Eren sputters, "You _know _that scary girl, Armin?" and Annie spares him a half-glance, before she continues to walk to the empty table, alone.

"Rude," Mikasa murmurs, twirling her spoon into her food.

"No," Armin says, gently. "Maybe she didn't hear me."

"She definitely _did_, buddy—" Eren is interrupted by the sharp jab of Mikasa's elbow in his rib, but Armin pays their antics no mind. His eyes drift back to her, and he wonders, _Who are you, Annie Leonhart?_

X

**iii. **He picks the lock of the library with one of Mikasa's hair-pins. He absently wonders if she'll notice but decides against it—and he can always blame it on Eren.

_Those two, _he thinks fondly, as he creaks the door open, softly, softly—

"Armin?"

His heart leaps up into his throat and he jerks his head into the direction of the voice—_her voice—_and he realizes that he's never heard her say his name.

"…A-Annie," he stammers, not-so-subtly attempting to shut the door. "Fancy seeing you… here."

"I was walking," she says, throwing his words back at him. He manages a slight smile, as she gestures to the library door. "Breaking and entering?"

"N-no…uh." Sighing, he relents. "Yes. A little. It's just, there's this book I wanted to read, and I never have the time during training in the day and—"

"What's it called?" she interrupts, and it takes Armin a moment to completely register her words.

"It sounds silly but…" He smiles. "It's something called an _atlas. _It has maps of the old world—the _outside world_—and all of the names of places, of rivers, of mountains—did you know we even have _oceans_! The world is actually seventy-percent-water—and…" He quiets, giving her a sheepish laugh. "I'm sorry. I'm babbling."

Annie, though, only shakes her head. "I didn't stop you."

Armin feels the heat rise in his cheeks, before shyly asking, "Do you want to see it? The atlas? I have it hidden on one of the top shelves."

Annie says nothing, but when he opens the door to the library and slips inside, she follows.

X

**iv. **"I want you to teach me how to fight."

Annie blinks up at him, taken aback. "Why?"

Armin shrugs, as he looks at her; the window-glazed moonlight glints off her hair, and she looks almost dreamlike. "I'm… I'm not very strong. And you always spar with Eren, and he seems to be getting better."

"Eren is a suicidal idiot," she tells him, the '_and you aren't', _unsaid, but implied.

"I don't…" He sighs, raking a hand through his hair. "I don't want to be… weak."

Annie says, "You're asking the wrong person, then. There are stronger people than me. I don't like fighting. I'm—"

"—a bird-boned waif?" Armin cuts her off, and an undetectable smile plays on her lips. "A poor, weak, defenseless girl?"

"Yes," she deadpans, flipping absently through a book of maps, and Armin sighs.

"You're a good person, Annie," he says, honestly, and this seems to jolt her, as she stares at him like she's lost him in the maze of spilling stars.

"Am I," she asks, although it doesn't sound like a question at all.

And then she has him pinned.

It takes him a moment to recognize her grip on his wrists, the weight of her pushing him down. He barely manages a, "W-what are you—", before she says:

"Fight me off."

"I—" There are a million reasons to say _no: _they are surrounded by plumes of lit candles, and then books, and it's _midnight _and too much noise and everyone will wake up, too much movement and the entire training ground will be set on fire. If he breathes in too deeply he'll be stealing her air; if he moves an inch he will break this almost-touch and it will taper into something more, something he is not sure of, something—

She rolls off of him, easily enough, retying the ribbon in her hair.

"A good person," she repeats, dryly, before she leaves the room.

X

**v. **There's something caught in her eyes, he realizes, something stirring, soul-haunting; these dream-witches linger in her gaze, like spells pleading to be broken.

He never asks about it. He wonders if he over-thinks everything, when it comes to her—or, if he _under-thinks—_because sometimes all he can remember is the soft feel of her against him, the taste of her breath and the rhythm of her pulse:

_Fight me off, _she had said, and sometimes he wonders just what she meant.

X

**vi. **"You're joining the Survey Corps?" she asks.

"Mm," he says. "I am."

"Tch." She seems unimpressed. "Suicidal."

"Maybe," he tells her, smiling. "Good luck in the Police Force, though. Maybe I'll visit, some time."

"Maybe," she repeats, before her voice peaks. "Armin?"

"What is it?" he asks, and for a moment, he thinks this is it. He can see something inside of her unwind, uncoil, before the walls all come back into place. Before her face hardens again—and, despite the closeness, the half-breath between them, he can see nothing in her expression at all.

"Nothing," she murmurs. "Good luck. Don't die."

"I won't," he tells her, and he almost believes it.

X

**viii. **When she peels the cloak from his eyes and stares at him—despite the blood, despite the blur of the fall and the Titan-shape of her face, he _knows. _He knows it before she lets him go, he knows before she steps back and spares him, before she runs off and away in the skin and bones that are both not her own, and everything she had ever wanted them to be.

He wonders why he hadn't figured it out sooner. Why he hadn't noticed—the way she had moved, back then, like a prisoner in her own skin. Miserable with the world, with everything, yearning for something _more_, something he could never begin to understand.

"Annie," he breathes, and it tastes like something broken.

X

**ix. **In the alley, she is a shell of herself, and he wonders just who she was, just what _he _was to her, why she had not let him become just another smear on her blood-stained hands.

"Do I really seem like such a good person to you?" she asks him, baiting. Because she _knows_, she's always known, and he wonders if he always had, too.

_Yes, _he almost says, _you did. _

Instead, he leads her to her demise.

X

**x. **He is leaning over the crystal when she opens her eyes—the crystal-shards shattering around her like diamond rain-water, as she slowly, slowly, slowly blooms out—a butterfly, in reverse.

"…Armin," she says, voice hoarse with almost a year of disuse. "You—"

_You're awake, you're alive, you're a murderer, I shouldn't do this—_all of these thoughts run through Armin's mind, but instead he says, "We don't have much time."

"What are you doing?" she asks, as she lets him pull her from the wreckage of her crystal, the glass pieces of her armor.

"They'll find you. You need to escape," he tells her, simply, and his mind is running a mile a minute—_Don'tDoThisDon'tDoThisDon'tDoThis_—but he leads her to the passage, and it's like déjà vu, the moment all over again.

"Why?" she asks, still. "Why?"

_Why did you let me live? _

The question is bursting from her, just as it had from him, and he has no answers, only questions for this crystal-girl, this spell-eyed girl who has seen more death, has _caused _more death than even he could imagine.

"A life for a life," he says, simply, because these are the terms she—_he—_can understand. "What else would it be? Do I really seem like that good of a person, Annie?"

Her words are in his throat and her hand is in his and it's like everything is both the same and completely different—like everything between them has been set off-kilter and has been balanced, and she says nothing, and so does he, as he leads her towards her freedom.


End file.
